An Uncomplicated Louisianan
Laquitra was safeguarding her daughter's growing collection of flowers on a park bench when we started talking. As her kids ran and played on the local park jungle gym, she talked about her life growing up in Louisiana and the life she's been glad to have.
Her mom gave her the name after the cousin who it was originally planned for, was born male. She chuckles remembering her name's origin and the cousin she took it from. They're still close. She talked about her childhood with a rosy nostalgia.
“I grew up with 2 sisters and a brother here in Baton Rogue. I’m about 10 years older than my siblings so growing up, I was sort of like a sister-mother to all of them. It was my grandparents who raised us, which was wonderful, it was great. I actually appreciate growing up with my grandparents instead. They were more mature, they had strict rules, which was okay with me because I was never the partying type. I just followed the rules, played volleyball in school, was a cheerleader, normal stuff. But I got to take on a lot of the responsibilities of helping raise my siblings too. I think that helps me to raise my kids though, the same way.”
She put a lot of value in the lessons of respect and responsibility she learned as a kid.
“Growing up, respect was expected from all of us. That meant “yes ma’am” “no ma’am” as a baseline, no bad language, minding our manners all the time. We all understood we needed to go get a job or a part-time job to help out when we could. I remember there was an older lady that my grandma was close to. She didn’t have a husband so we would go down, us kids, to help her out around the house when she needed it.”
Perhaps a reflection of this culture of respect, much of her family are military or ex-military.
“My grandpa, and a bunch of my cousins were in the military. I haven’t really thought about it much. I just sort of assumed that that was how everyone’s families are. We always grew up loving America and expecting to serve it however we could. For many in my family, that meant enrolling in the military.”
Laquitra went through grade school and high school with honors before graduating from Southern University with a bachelor's degree in childhood development and a place on the Dean's List. She capped it off with a master's degree in business administration from Grand Canyon University online. She wanted for a time to open her own daycare but hasn't been able to find the right combination of financial grants and resources to get it up and running yet. For now, she works in the budget department of the State of Louisiana. She seemed almost uniformly happy with her life the way it was now, going so far as to describe her community as near perfect when I asked what she found disagreeable in the world around her,
“Things have been pretty great. Even the community I live in now, it’s a mixed race community and all our kids get along and play. The parents get along and talk. It’s great, I love it, it’s very family oriented. And that’s very important to me because I don’t have to worry about anything. My kids can go play with the neighbors, they get along and we don’t have any problems. It’s really been just great.
I don’t mean to sound boring but I really can’t even think of much that’s been challenging. I didn’t have any major problems growing up and even now I don’t, because my job is great, my community is great. Everything has been good. I guess my only challenge is raising my kids, they keep me busy but that’s pretty much it.”
